“Nah, I hate the smell of paint and sawdust. Let’s go someplace.”

“All right.”

They walked silently up Third Avenue to P. J. Clarke’s and leaned on the corner of the bar.

“The usual?”

“Fine.”

“A Wild Turkey and a Stoly, both rocks,” Dino said to the barman. “Make em doubles.”

They both looked idly around until the drinks came.

Dino held up his glass. “Better days.”

Stone nodded and drank.

Dino gulped a quarter of the vodka. “I feel bad about what happened,” he said.

“It’s okay, Dino. Maybe it was all for the best.” He told Dino about his dinner with Bill Eggers.

“That’s great, Stone, and I’m happy for you, but it’s still not okay with me. You were my partner, and I should have at least warned you what was coming. I didn’t know myself until that morning.”

“You were my partner, too, and I didn’t back you up,” Stone said.

“Yeah, but you were right, that’s the difference. I was wrong, and because of what I did Morgan croaked herself.”

Stone said nothing.

“I took the call,” Dino said, blinking.

Stone still said nothing.

“She was in the bathtub, and it looked like the tub was full of blood.”

“Jesus,” Stone allowed himself.

“She had a straight razor. God knows what she was doing with it, even if she was a dyke. You think she was keeping it in case she grew a beard?”

Stone shrugged.

“She stuck it in right under her left ear and pulled it all the way around, deep.”

Stone winced.

“She had guts, I’ll say that for her. I couldn’t never do that, not in a million years. Pills, maybe. Maybe eat your gun, but you don’t die right away when you cut your own throat. It must hurt like all hell, and you got time to think about what you done before you go under.” Dino shifted his weight and took another deep pull from his glass. “She left a note.”

“The papers didn’t say anything about that,” Stone said, surprised.

Dino took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Stone.

Stone read it.

I have never harmed another human being in my life. I did not harm Sasha Nijinsky. I loved her, and she loved me, and I would never have done anything to hurt her.

I want my friends to know that this is not a suicide. This is murder, and the police are the murderers.